1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a container having a body and a cover such as a notebook type personal computer, and more particularly to a mechanism for latching and releasing the cover with and from the body.
2. Description of the Related Art
A notebook PC generally has a latch mechanism for latching and releasing the cover with and from the system body, because it is necessary to prevent the closed cover from coming loose and from opening accidentally. An example of such a mechanism is disclosed in Japanese Published Unexamined Patent Application (PUPA) No. 4-80786. The latch mechanism is conventional, and provides latching hooks to a cover so as to engage the cover with a system body. In order to open the cover from the system body, an operation for releasing the hooks from the system body and an operation for lifting the cover itself are executed consecutively with the hooks held in the releasing position. If the latch mechanisms are provided to both of the right and left sides of the cover, the operations for releasing the right latch mechanism by the right hand and for releasing the left latch mechanism by the left hand must be done simultaneously and then held in the released state while lifting the cover by both hands. Therefore, the conventional latch mechanism is inconvenient to open, and impossible to open the cover using only one hand.
JA PUPA No. 3-101298 discloses a notebook PC having a handle for carrying extending from the cover. A latch mechanism is released in response to the operation of pushing the handle into the cover. In this mechanism, it is possible to open the cover using only one hand, since the handle can be pushed and the cover can be lifted by the same hand. However, in order to hold the latch mechanism in the released state, it is necessary to continue to push the handle. That is, since it is necessary to lift the cover simultaneously with pushing the handle. This mechanism is not convenient to operate either. Moreover, in this mechanism, complicated construction is required for linking the motion of the handle to the latch mechanism.
Also known is a mechanism including a spring for lifting a latching hook after release from a system body, thereby lifting a cover so as to keep a latch mechanism in a released state. However, such a mechanism, does not exhibit simplicity in construction since the spring for lifting the cover must be added. Besides, the proper strength of the spring depends on the weight of a cover to be lifted, friction caused by the rotation of a mounting shaft for the cover and the like. Accordingly, it is difficult to mount a relatively heavy cover including a color display apparatus and a relatively light cover including a monochrome display apparatus on a common system body so that they can be exchanged each other.